Junk yards are no place for a car guy

Growing up in south Jersey, I remember going by the local junk yards and trying to catch a glimpse of what cars might be there as my parents sped past in our Datsun. A small one nearby always had a rusty late-'60s Olds Toronado living out front among the weeds, and an even bigger yard had a pieced-together '68 Camaro perched on the roof, complete with a yellow rattle-can paint job.

To my young mind, there was all kinds of automotive gold behind those fences. Why, I'll bet there are old Corvettes, Porsches, and probably a Ferrari or two languishing in a back corner, just ready to be plucked out and restored!

When I turned 18, I set out one day in search of parts for our trusty Datsun, and was allowed to wander through my first junk yard. It was nothing like I'd imagined. I'd peruse rows and rows of milquetoast family sedans stacked on top of each other, and when I would stumble across the occasional cool car, it had been smashed nearly beyond recognition, and stripped bare by automotive vultures who had been feeding on it for years. It was really quite sad. 

But joy returned to me when I spotted a blue 1982 Datsun 310, just like mine. It even seemed to be in great shape, and I was hoping it had the parts I needed. Unfortunately, it was 12 feet above me, stacked on top of three other cars. A well-meaning employee with a forklift kindly asked if I'd like a better look and, upon seeing my smile, proceeded to punch two holes in the side of the pretty Datsun with the forks, pluck it from the top of the pile and drop it to the ground at my feet, bending the unibody frame in the process. The poor little blue car lay broken and battered in front of me. I lifted the hatchback, didn't find what I was looking for, but thanked the forklift operator for his efforts. He smiled and waved as he picked up the car, and put it in the crusher. Twenty seconds later, it was an unrecognizable blue slab of metal.

It felt like I'd left my heart in that car.

I've always had a personal attachment to cars, and while I've never been one to assign names to them, I often find myself thinking back on what the car and I have been through together. I'd look at the back corner of my old Datsun and remember it being dragged along an embankment when my father fell asleep on a family road trip to North Carolina. I'd look at my friend's Cadillac, and remember driving with the windows down and grinning while we'd blast it down a back road. I'd sit in my old Mazda3, and remember the day I brought it home from the dealership - the only brand-new car I've ever purchased. 

As I walk through junkyards, I can't help but look at the mangled, destroyed cars, and wonder what memories still lie in their chassis. Maybe that green car had an epic road trip. Or maybe someone got their first kiss in the back seat of the red one. One day, someone was overjoyed to have purchased that silver one brand-new, and drove it home full of pride. It makes me sad to think that, like most scrapped cars, they will eventually be destroyed, and forever erasing those automotive memories.

I recently had to make a trip to a local junk yard, a massive facility out by the railroad tracks. It's much better organized than the ones I grew up with, but the cars seem to be more mangled now than I remember them being in my younger days. I find myself slightly relieved when I stumble upon a Triumph Spitfire and an Alfa Romeo Spider of the same vintage keeping company in a back corner. But alas, they're both stripped bare, the Alfa's windshield frame has been cut off and thrown aside, and the rest of it has been there so long, it is nearly unrecognizable.

I try to remind myself that many of these cars will be recycled into new ones, ready to start new memories for their owners. But the romantic in me still weeps over the carcasses, and can't help but feel sorry for the now-faceless spirits languishing among the rows. 

As for my Datsun, it blew an engine and eventually found its way to the same scrapyard as that blue Datsun on the pile. I was glad I wasn't home when they came to pick it up. It turns out all those memories were only worth a total of $75.

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On a side note, my favorite junkyard relic was an old Pontiac Fiero GT that was in a yard in New Jersey. The car had obviously burned to the ground from an engine fire. However, the yard decided to keep the entire car because the driver's door was absolutely perfect.

Holladay's Used Auto Parts, where Christian found the little, blue Datsun.

Photo courtesy of Google Maps

Bench Racing, and Other Great Lies #6

Here's one from Christian's past that he's offered to share as part of the next great installment in the wildly-popular, Bench Racing, and Other Great Lies series.

We love to hear stories, whether they're true, or just a great lie. So click the "Contact" link in Christian's profile, and send 'em to us. We'll even help edit, and maybe exaggerate a lie or two ourselves!

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One day during my Sophomore year in high school, my friend, Steve, stopped me in the hall. "What are you doing after school? 'Cause I have my Dad's Trans Am today."

This was a rare treat for both of us. Steve's father was a company executive who owned a handful of interesting toys including a big block '68 Corvette convertible and this car, a 1983 Pontiac Trans Am with the Daytona Pace Car package. We immediately made plans to go for a drive after school.

Within minutes of the final bell ringing, Steve and I were jumping into the car like, well, two kids who borrowed Dad's cool car.

We cruised it to a local 7-Eleven where we eased it into a prime parking spot right in front of the door. The car was loaded to the hilt with all the goodies, including the aerodynamic wheel covers and a 5-speed, and the white paint made the wedge-shaped car look like the shark that it was.

We'd only been inside a couple minutes when we came back outside to find a large gentleman admiring the car. A few pleasantries were exchanged between him and Steve as I got into the car. As I did, I overheard the man say to Steve, "I see you have a dent in the rear quarter panel and a crack in the spoiler. I do bodywork, and would be happy to give you a price on the repair." Steve thought that sounded like a good idea, and agreed to pull around the side of the building to get a quote.

I almost smacked him when he got back in the car.

We pulled around the side of the building, parked between a dumpster and an old blue and tan '77 Thunderbird. Steve got out to talk to the man when another man got out of the Thunderbird and popped the trunk. I wished that Steve had left me with the keys, but I stayed in the car and locked my door.

What eventually made me get out of the car was several loud, metallic banging noises followed by the car shaking. This was caused by a slide hammer punching eight holes in the fender. For the next five minutes, I watched as Steve's eyes remained the size of dinner plates covered in a big heaping of panic. Before he could panic any further, plastic filler was made up and spread over the holes. "All it needs is paint," said the first man. "That'll be $300."

The scam had been set, and these guys had two naive 16-year-olds in their sights. Steve gulped hard, and took a step towards the man. "That's not right. You said you were going to give me an estimate. Not actually fix the car."

Unfortunately for Steve, the man took a step towards him, and the second guy (still holding the slide hammer in his hand) was glaring at me. "I don't know what you're talking about. You owe us $300, mother fucker. And you're going to give us that money, right now."

"I'll have to go to the ATM across the street," Steve said.

"That's good. We'll follow you over. Don't try anything stupid." And that's exactly what we did.

We got back into the cars, and Steve pulls the Pontiac to the driveway. "Hold on. TIGHT." We were about to try something stupid.

For the next ten minutes, the two cars bobbed and weaved through traffic on Route 202 in Delaware at high speed, cutting through neighborhoods, blowing through stop signs and red lights, all the time hoping we'd come across a police officer. If a bridge had been out, we'd have jumped it, Dukes of Hazzard style! Hal Needham couldn't have asked for a better car chase.

Eventually, we cut through a shopping center and barreled down a side road. We pulled into a neighborhood, and came to a screeching halt in the driveway of an elderly gentleman who was mowing his lawn. He must have thought we were crazy, but seeing the panic in our eyes and our shaking voices convinced him that we were telling the truth. He and his wife let us use the phone, and Steve called his father to explain everything.

Forty-five minutes later, Steve's father pulled up in the driveway, and escorted us back to school where my ride home was waiting.

I don't know if the car was ever repaired, but it took me years to not go into a blind panic every time I saw a blue '77 Thunderbird.

Photo from http://autopolis.wordpress.com

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We build excitment - just not cars anymore

With all the excitement and pageantry that is Halloween, no one seemed to notice a strange disappearance....

That's right - while we were all out trick-or-treating, General Motors closed down Pontiac.

There's no doubt that a lot of people will be saddened by this - including me. And there will be thousands of pages written by journalists lamenting the loss of the once great brand. So as much as I'd love to sit and wax rhetoric with Jim Wangers about the GTO, I don't really feel like it's what my Pontiac memories were like.

Growing up as a little kid, I always seemed to have a black and gold Trans Am in my hand, whether it was a Matchbox car or a plastic toy. I must have had six or seven of them at any one time. One even had a "Bandit" decal on the side, which never registered with me until I was about 12 and someone showed me "Smokey and the Bandit". To this day, I'd love to get a ride in a 1978 Trans Am Special Edition - just make mine with a 4-speed and the Buick 455 engine.

My first real Pontiac memory came with the first episode of "Knight Rider". That sleek, black 1982 Firebird Aero whistling its way across a desert, with the red lights in the nose, just looked like it could have been the fastest car EVER. Sure, it talked, but it sounded like nothing else on the road and even had a "Turbo Boost" button that made it fly!

I always liked the looks of those cars, but it wasn't until 1993 that I finally got to drive one. It was a burgundy Firebird GTA, complete with the Corvette L98 TPI motor, gold mesh wheels, and the T-tops out. The owner let me hammer it down the street, and the roar combined with the shark-like looks made me feel like the coolest guy around. "You got a Ferrari? Whatever."

Years before that, I remember a friend of our family bought a new white-on-blue Grand Am SE sedan. It had the big, alloy wheels and a screaming QUAD-4 motor with 180hp. With the body cladding, matching white wheels and the digital dash, it was a sweet ride in all of its 1980's-ness.

I even liked the big Bonneville. I still remember running out to the Pontiac dealer around 1990, and demanding to see a Bonneville SSEi with the supercharger. The salesman thought I was nuts, but I'd seen one in print, and fell in love. To this day, I still think it was one of GM's better designs, albeit with those funky  front faux vent windows. Make mine hunter green, like every other one. Seriously, anyone remember ever seeing one that wasn't?

Even the Fiero still draws my eye when I see one go past. I loved the way they looked, but was disappointed when I finally got a seat in one (an early V6 GT model), and didn't fit well at all. I'd love the chance to try it again.

In more recent years, Pontiac became a GM knockoff. The models seemed to lose their uniqueness, and became even more of a lackluster car. As car enthusiasts, we'd convinced ourselves that Pontiacs were Pontiacs - not rebodied Camaros, Cutlasses or LeSabres. But somewhere in the last 10 or 15 years, the magic that blinded us wore off, and we saw Pontiacs for what they were.

Trans Sport. Sunfire. Aztec. When did they go from "We Build Excitement" to "We Build Crap"?

Once GM turned their back on the car enthusiasts, the damage was done. Even really great cars like the new GTO, Solstice, G6 and the G8 failed to bring back the hordes of fans. All the hard work, legend and lore that had been put into the brand by folks like Ed Cole, John DeLorean and others, had been thrown out within a few years time.

With brands dropping like flies at GM, it makes you wonder where the company is headed, and who's running the joint. 'Cause it sure ain't car guys anymore.